Review Summary: This album is the perfect break from your ordinary black-metal bands. Ferocity is greatly mixed with melodies, but it is still cold, dark and extreme as black-metal is supposed to be.
Venom and
Bathory would be without a doubt the first pioneers of black-metal, and black-metal is also one of the metal scene's darkest and most unpleasant shapes of metal. People might see black-metal as a form of musical art while others see it as a form of religion/lifestyle; some may even see it as a mix of both. Black-metal is a very raw, cold, dark and fast form of music which often has lyrics based on Satanism, occult, death etc. There not are many countries that have a massive export of this type of music, as I can only think of one single country that delivers massive amounts of black-metal: Norway. Norway is home to many famous black-metal bands, such as
Mayhem,
Darkthrone,
Satyricon,
Dimmu Borgir and
Emperor. Just like death-metal, black-metal is one large and solid metal genre, but even in black-metal you will find terms as symphonic black-metal, atmospheric black-metal and melodic black-metal. This has created different opinions among people and of course the black-metal bands as well. Some bands think that the way to go is to play old-school and there for they often dislikes or even hates other bands that are using material that was not meant to exist in the black-metal genre. But even those experimental bands have come a long way and the main reason is simply that they created something new and people liked it. Norway might be the leading country to export black-metal, but how about other countries? Sweden is alongside America as the leading countries in the death-metal genre but they have also proven that they also can create high-quality black-metal, bands like
Dark Funeral and
Marduk are some of Sweden’s proudest black-metal bands for example.
Noctes is a band that I have recently discovered and they were surprisingly good but unfortunately they are now disbanded. The band was created in 1992 in Sweden but they only released two full-length albums. They played melodic black-metal, and just like
In Flames did with death-metal the band took a very extreme and perfected metal genre and added melodies to its original aggressive nature. As a final result, the mix between ferocity and beauty became a much perfected and somewhat gentle form of metal that creates great diversity among countless of other non-melodic bands.
Noctes melodic black-metal is very raw and extreme but it is still melodic and varied.
In 1997
Noctes released their first full-length album, called
Pandemonic Requiem. Here you have an excellent, perfected and well-executed form of extreme metal, and you also have the ferocity and immense technicality of black-metal metal and the melodic and atmospheric tunes from death-metal. Death-metal has never been known for melodies though, as the only exceptions were with bands like [bIn Flames[/b] and
At The Gates, since they revolutionized the death-metal genre when they incorporated melody in their material. Either way, the blend between melody and intensity is executed with excellent musicianship and skill. Repetitive does not exist in this album, as all the songs posses their own structure and sound. Although most of the songs have similar structures, they all have different sets of riffs, drumbeats and vocal work.
Winterdawn and
Outro are the only two tracks that really stand outside the other larger songs, as these songs are more based on keyboard engineering and have larger atmospheres.
Winterdawn takes on a symphonic sound with whisperings as vocals and
Outro has more depressive and lighter sound, since this track is also based on melodic keyboards and it has no vocals. Other than that the rest of the songs are nearly flawless. Here you have highlights such as
Reverie with its fast but yet melodic riffing, varied drum work, nice tempo changes and vocal work.
Purgatory Temptations stands out because of its viking-sounding opening riffs and overall dark atmosphere, but it is also a bit calmer than the other tracks.
Hokmah Nistargh is a very catchy song with a great variation of drumming, and it has some haunting guitar work and is quite heavy as well.
In Silence is one song that takes on a death-metal approach with atmospheric background keyboard sounds, and once more the guitar work is performed with excellence. As with many other black-metal bands,
Noctes does not deliver any special messages in the song writing, as most songs are about darkness, cold, cruelty and Satanism. Most of the lyrics are still well written in my opinion, since the lyrics are quite poetic and sometimes a bit epic.
Butterfly might be a bit confusing because of the strange track title but this ‘’butterfly’’ is another word for soul un this track, this particular song is about the soul (butterfly) that leaves the body when everything has come to an end where everything turns black and cold.
Some bands sometimes have experienced members who have either worked with other famous or infamous bands, single-man projects and such but
Noctes had members that never went on to other bands after they broke up.
Noctes had a crew of five people.
Johan Lonn was the vocalist in this band and he really delivered high-class vocal work. There is nothing too extreme or too lame, the black-esque screams and shrieks have a very cutting sound and the death-growls create a bit more depth and, of course, variety.
Pasi Lundegard and
Holger Thorsin were the two guitarists, and both of them handled their guitars with perfection and skill. A heavy and solid rhythm section is followed by a technical and varied lead section. Black-metal guitars are often played in tremendous speed, often with few riff changes or tremolo riffs as it is called and blistering solos, but this does not occur in every black-metal band though. This type of guitar performance delivers a very varied selection of riffs and other types of guitar work. The riffs are played fast most of the time with more or less melodic structures. Catchiness, heaviness, melodic and speed would be the best words to describe the overall guitar work. Guitar solos are present here but unfortunately they don't shine as much as the overall guitar performance, as most guitar solos are not as complex or technical as you might expect. Short, melodic, sometimes a bit eerie and spooky and quite standard or basic would be accurate words for describing the guitar solos. Although the guitar solos has a quite distinctive sound so you will notice when a solo is played that’s for sure.
Asa Rosenberg was the female bassist, and though she didn't delivered any standout performances, she definitely added a heavy and solid sound to back up the rhythm sections.
Hugo Thorsin was the drummer and he delivers some of the qualities that black-metal has to offer. Intensive blast-beats, double-bass kicking and mid-paced drumming are often heard throughout the material but there are also some heavier, slower, and more rhythmic drumming as well, as this creates a great variety in the songs and it really lowers the repetitive scale.
There were lots of positive things rather than negative things in this album. Even if there are a few flaws in this album, they are easily overshadowed by the other qualities. To start with, the instrumental performance is crystal clear, as the overall sound quality was great. Neither guitars, drums, bass or vocals interfere with each other, and the guitars have a nice high-pitched tune which is not to high, and both the bass and the guitars creates a solid and steady wall of sound. The drum performance is probably one of the best I have heard in this type of music. Some bands tend to have a very poor variety when it comes to drumming, which means that there are almost only continues blast-beats. Thanks to a varied drum performance, this album will grow on the listener quite faster and it will stay rooted for a longer period of time. Vocals can be a critical part in a metal band, since sometimes the vocalist has a powerful singing voice but they might also have problems in delivering a varied vocal performance. Thankfully, however, this never happens here. Black-metal is known for having raspy vocals, shrieks, screams etc, but here you also have death-growls alongside the evil rasps and hollering screams. Also, this creates good diversity and once again it will help you will stick to the album a much longer time. But after listing the positives, is there anything really negative here? Actually no. It's really just a matter of taste, since some people might find this awesome, and others might think that it is bad because of the incorporation of melodies. But the lack of solos might be one small error in this album. There are few solos here, and even if there are solos here you might mistake them for the lead guitar. A guitar solo is still not a critical part of a song but a solo can be enough to raise a bad or boring song, and that would be the only error in this album. We can add one more thing that is bad for the album though but it is still not a huge error, sometimes during the intros to the songs or anywhere in a song you might notice that a riff is not fully performed or a drumbeat is missing. But these sorts of errors rarely occur and the mistakes are easily compensated by the rest of the song. This album has everything to be labelled as a melodic black-metal band.
I have encountered various types of metal bands that have black-metal influences, sometimes it is the vocals, the drumming, the guitar work, you name it, but then I was thinking, "
Is there something that is actually called melodic black-metal?" I looked around a bit and I encountered
Noctes which grabbed my interest, and once again it was a band that was disbanded (to my disappointment), but my interest was strong enough to make to me search for one of their albums. Judging by lyrics, origin, and metal category I got
Pandemonic Requiem and it hooked me faster than I thought. I can just say that this album stands out from the black-metal genre because of its melodic material, and it is still not
too melodic, since the songs still display the raw and extreme nature of black-metal. Thanks to the melodic tunes it is a very suitable metal album, both for experienced, serious metal fans and inexperienced newcomers in the extreme-metal scene. If you are tired of all these old-school black-metal bands and you are in a search for something new, I highly recommend this album. If you like bands such as
Dissection,
Nightshade or
Hypocrisy or perhaps the newer or "second generation" Norwegian black-metal bands such as
Dimmu Borgir you will definitely enjoy this album for a long time. I also want to point out that this album might not be an album that every metal head is craving for but once again, if you like black-metal is different shapes and melodic death-metal then you will definitely enjoy this album.
Positive
+ The album displays the best traits from black-metal and melodic death-metal
+ A very diverse and varied album
+ A very suitable metal album for people within the extreme-metal genre
+ Every performance is executed in excellence
+ Great vocal performance
+ Great sound quality, except that the bass is a bit hard to hear
Negative
- A few more guitar solos could've been included in the material
Recommended Tracks
-- Reverie
-- In Silence
-- Butterfly
-- Attila
Extreme, dark, melodic and precise, these were the qualities of Noctes. This album will be given a 4.5/5
This Message Edited On 01.18.07
